Speaker
1: |
Mountains
are good for the soul. Up here, stress gives away, at least in good weather,
to serenity. There's sense of timelessness in mountains. Enduring.
Everlasting. |
|
The
reality though is that the Alps are not what they were. By some estimates,
30% of the alpine ice cover has disappeared over the past century. |
Doug
Meere: |
A
glacier takes several decades, a glacier of this size, to respond to change
in the climate. |
Speaker
1: |
Dr. Doug Meere of Cambridge
University has been studying the Arolla Glacier for
six years. |
Doug
Meere: |
You
can visibly see the snout, the front of the glacier, retreating year by year.
It's going back at about 20 metres a year, which is quite dramatic. And we've
lost, in height, we've lost all the way from that sort of grey gravel
material all the way down to where it is now. Sort of 200 metres of ice is
lost in height as well. |
|
This
is typical of glaciers all over the Alps, in that they've been retreating
steadily in fits and starts, during different periods, for the last 150 years
since 1850. |
Speaker
1: |
And
that time scale neatly accords with the Industrial Revolution in Europe. In
the global warming debate, the Alps are exhibit A. |
|
In
the Saas Valley, there are classic postcard scenes
at almost every turn. People live surrounded by nature. At the Ville Haus in
[inaudible], the [Zabrigens] think this is close to
paradise, and yet Helmut acknowledges the precarious nature of mountain life. |
Helmut: |
[Foreign
language] Indeed, glaciers are dangerous but in specific zones. It's divided
up in Switzerland. Some are highest, some low. We live in a rather dangerous
area. |
Speaker
1: |
The
water that falls so prettily in the Zabrigen
backyard is the run off from glaciers 1000 metres above them. |
|
Tracking
the source of the glacial melt requires a punishing drive up precarious
slopes. The locals boast this is the highest road in Europe. It's also one of
the worst. Tourists don't use it, but valley people are constantly monitoring
the terrain, hoping to identify land slippages and rockfalls before they
happen. |
Alvin: |
Fantastic. |
Speaker
1: |
Alvin
[Vilitz] works at the local cable car company, and
helps run his family's tourist hotel. His future is directly tied to what
happens up in the mountains. |
Alvin: |
We
know the glacier is going back all the time and there is more moraines all
the time. It's always a game. Before, years ago, they always told us, "A
glacier will grow seven years, and afterwards it'll go back seven
years." This rule doesn't, is not true anymore because in the last
years, it went back all the time. |
Speaker
1: |
Glacial
melt is naturally enough most obvious in summer. In winter, the glacier
advances and retreats under the weight of snow. In another part of
Switzerland's valley region, British scientists have spent 10 years
investigating the movements of the Arolla glacier. |
Speaker
5: |
What
we're doing is sticking on this metal stem here, which is going on the end of
a 100 metre long hose. It's got a special attachment at the end here, and
when we pump up the drill, very hot high pressurised water comes out the end
of this tip here. |
Speaker
1: |
The
hose tip follows the path of a bore hole, drilled more than 100 metres down
through the ice and rock. The object is to see how the hole has been deformed
in the past year by the movement of the glacier. More broadly, researchers
focused on the tracking of water flows through the glacier. |
Speaker
6: |
In
sort of simple terms, you could imagine the water being a bit like oil, like
a lubricant. If you've got inefficient drainage, the waters becomes
pressurised and it can actually jack the glacier up on the hydraulic
pressure, and therefore it'll move faster because we've reduced the friction.
Whereas if you've got really efficient drainage such as, in effect, like
rivers flowing underneath the glacier, the pressure's tend to be lower and
basically the ice rather than being floated by the water under high pressure,
it tends to move much more slowly. |
Speaker
1: |
Mountain
people are used to living with the threats that come from nature. Avalanches,
land slippages, rockfalls, and flash floods, which may account for the strong
faith of the villages. |
Speaker
7: |
[foreign
language] |
Speaker
1: |
The
Church of Maria [Himmelfarb] dates from 1812. Two previous churches were
destroyed by rockfalls, and boulders still occasionally crash down. |
Speaker
7: |
[Foreign
language] |
Speaker
1: |
Almost
all the worshipers here have known tragedy. Ulma [Kalbermartin] and his sister Serena [Bergana]
recall as if it were yesterday what happened one late summers day in 1965 on
the Allalin Glacier. |
Serena: |
[Foreign
language] Look. I would like to show you where the glacier used to be, and
where it fell down. You see where the red moraine is? Where the water is
coming down? That's where it broke and slid all the way to the bottom. Where
all the men worked. |
Speaker
1: |
88
workers were buried over half a million cubic tonnes of ice and rock. They'd
been building a new dam, the Mattmark, in the
valley at the base of the glacier. |
Serena: |
[Foreign
language] It is for me very sad because I knew many of the people who worked
there. I was on the back of the Alp. I was on foot and I came around and saw
it all. Then we looked to see who was in fact dead. |
Speaker
1: |
The
collapse of the Allalin Glacier remains
Switzerland's worst post-war natural disaster and memory of it is seared into
the consciousness of valley people. |
Helmut: |
[foreign
language] This is the glacier from here to here. This is where it broke and
it came down like an avalanche, and it came all the way up here and then came
back, and so all the people ran in the wrong direction. |
Speaker
1: |
Fears
of a similar catastrophe in the Saas Valley are
ever-present, and are heightened by scares about global warming. |
Helmut: |
[foreign
language] It's always a theme in the media when something happens. Like in
Grindelwald where a glacier broke and 30000 cubic metres of glacier fell. And
they calculate that another 70000 metres are waiting to fall. |
Speaker
1: |
At
2500 metres above sea level, the Arolla glacier is
perilous. It's riven with crevasses. Fall in one of them, and there's little
likelihood of escape. |
Doug
Meere: |
Here
we go. Got a good view of the glacier from up here. [crosstalk] Set the
[inaudible] up. See if the glacier's moved since yesterday. |
Speaker
1: |
Doug
Meere and PhD student Becky [Goodsell]
have traversed up the moraine wall to survey the glacier. |
Doug
Meere: |
This
is the [inaudible]. It's a surveying and electronic distance measuring device,
and it and now it's fine. And when you hear that noise, what's happening is,
there's an infrared beam. |
Becky: |
Right. |
Doug
Meere: |
Coming
out the front of the [inaudible]. |
Becky: |
Right. |
Doug
Meere: |
It's
going out to the prism. Getting reflected back, and when it picks up a
reflection, it makes a noise, just to let you know. And the centre of the
glacier at this time of year is generally moving at around three centimetres
a day. |
Becky: |
Yeah. |
Doug
Meere: |
And
the edge is about one and a half centimetres a day. If the rate of melting
today continues, we're probably looking at within somewhere between 70 and
100 years, this glacier will have separated into a couple of small, cirque
glaciers, and will not really be able to be classified as a valley glacier as
such. |
Speaker
10: |
Thank
you. [Foreign language]. Train tickets please. [French] |
Speaker
1: |
Extinction
of the glaciers would be disastrous for the tourist trade. It's Switzerland's
second biggest earner. |
Speaker
11: |
[Spanish] |
Speaker
1: |
Even
in relatively quiet valleys like the Sass, foreign visitors have been a
source of an unprecedented prosperity. |
Alvin: |
You'll
like this. |
Speaker
13: |
Well,
I hope I'll like it a lot actually. It looks pretty good. |
Speaker
1: |
At
the [Vilitz] family's hotel in Saas-Grund,
Alvin is weary of the doomsday scenarios being promoted. |
Alvin: |
If
I'm speaking with other people, they say the time is for getting better. It
will cool down, and the glaciers will grow again. |
Speaker
1: |
There
are people in the Swiss government who tell you that? |
Alvin: |
Yeah.
Yeah. Especially. Because I have a lot of connections with people. We're
studying the glaciers and so on. They're saying it was already years before
where the glaciers went back all the time, but the time will go on and we'll
get a new area. |
Speaker
1: |
A
new growth? |
Alvin: |
A
new growth. Yeah. |
Speaker
1: |
Tourism
isn't the only industry likely to be hit by climate change. Switzerland's
heavily subsidised rural industries will be directly effected,
and with it, important elements of the national heritage. In summer, the
famous "Fighting Cows" of the valley are able to graze in the high
pastures. |
|
This
is the time of the year when villages hold what are called "Cow parties,"
and the star of this one is Mandolin. [crosstalk] Mandolin's owner, Sebastian
[Etamartin] explains why she's being feted as queen
cow of the mountain. |
Sebastian: |
[foreign
language] Well, this is actually the one with the most temperament and so much
power. It's the first time, but it went great immediately. [crosstalk] |
Speaker
1: |
Sebastian
doesn't want to contemplate big changes in the patterns of his life. Which is
understandable enough, but it may be forced upon him. Switzerland seems
particularly beset by our [inaudible] world. The 90s have been the hottest
decade of the century. |
Becky: |
Okay.
But the edge of the mover. |
Speaker
16: |
Right.
Okay. Right. |
Speaker
1: |
This
glacier is like a vast laboratory. Experiments produce much needed data. But
drawing definitive conclusions is another matter entirely. |
Doug
Meere: |
You'll
never get a consensus amongst scientists as to whether it's definitely human
induced global warming, greenhouse effect. It's certainly a very plausible
theory and if we wait, the several hundred years that it would require for us
to be absolutely sure whether or not this was the greenhouse effect or global
warming, human beings then, it would be too late to do anything about it
because of the time lags involved in climate systems. We would have had
several hundred years of greenhouse effect, and it would probably have an
effect on global climate for hundreds of thousands of years after that. |
Speaker
1: |
By
which time of course, the glaciers would have long since vanished into
history. |